iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 26/09/2026

always hilarious when stuff that people insist must be a signifier of an optimistic techno-utopia turn out to just kinda suck

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

🍿 so, everything about this is the most interesting thing ever to me. If you think having to read other people's AI-generated documents is boring, at least you can skim those. What happens when someone gives a circuitous and overblown AI-generated speech? You just have to sit and listen.

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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 23/09/2026

Like Mike, I have a degree in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science (mine's a little older). Here he articulates what I've felt but not quite understood about why the new AI explosion doesn't excite me in the way I'd have expected.

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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Kitty map! This is how cats migrated to Europe. Great little writeup in the post too: buff.ly/3ttaUWg

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 19/09/2026

Today, 19 September, is Batman Day. You’d think there would be a signal or something but Anyway, here’s “Batman’s Aff His Nut”, by Robert Florence #poem #poetry #Batman #BatmanDay mothdancepoetry.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/b...

Batman’s aff his nut
Robert Florence

Batman’s aff his nut
Have you seen the way he cuts aboot
Dressed up as a mad fuckin bat
Batterin guys
I was lit at:
“Mate, I’m worried aboot ye
I know your ma and da died
But everybody’s ma and da dies
And we’re no aw runnin aboot
Hookin muggers and
Kickin psychopaths in the baws.”
And that was when Batman went
“Aye, but do ye ever feel like it?
Do you ever look at the world and feel like it?
Like having a big mad base under your hoose?
Do you ever feel like drivin a big mad motor
that turns intae a tank?
And leatherin fuck oot of guys aw night?
Scarin the fuckin shite oot of them?”
And that’s when I was lit at:
“Aye. Fuck it. Ah dae.”
And that’s the Secret Origin of Robin
And everyone else.

Blurry photo of a man (possibly a stunt-double?) in a (partial? certainly no cape) Batman costume, in daytime, on a wet Glasgow street – probably taken during the filming of the 2022 movie THE BATMAN, where Glasgow was a stand-in for Gotham City.

Text:
She’s turned the Waynes against us…

She’s turned the Waynes against us

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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 18/09/2026

Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room! Good catch. You *can* fight in here. That’s on me. I’ve updated the list of rooms that it’s confirmed you can fight in.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 17/09/2026

Happy #NationalFoxDay to all who celebrate! 🦊 #fox #poem #poetry Ian Hamilton Finlay FOX see me wan time ah wis a fox an wis ah sleekit! ah gaed slinkin heh an snappin yeh the blokes aa sayed ah wis a GREAT fox aw nae kiddin ah wis pretty good had a whole damn wood in them days hen

A page from a book, printed in a reddish-brown ink. The top left contains a stylised papercut picture of a slightly scrawny, scraggly-looking fox. Beneath it is the text of the poem, “Fox’, by Ian Hamilton Finlay, published in GLASGOW BEASTS, AN A BURD, HAW, AN INSEKS, AN, AW, A FUSH, with papercuts by John Picking & Pete McGinn (The Wild Flounder Press, 1961):

see me
wan time
ah wis a fox
an wis ah sleekit! ah
gaed slinkin
heh
an snappin
yeh
the blokes
aa sayed ah wis a GREAT fox
aw nae kiddin
ah wis pretty good
had a whole damn wood
in them days
hen

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Sometimes, the big camera isn't quite the right tool for the job

A large green bird perched on a table, a few inches in front of a camera lens

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Comfortably Numb @numb.comfortab.ly · 13/09/2026

So they realized they're in the gutter, no revenue in sight, operating at a tremendous loss, and suddenly decided to slow down "to save the humanity."

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A few years back, I used a similar UK phenomenon (exhaustive visitor lists in holiday towns) to successfully pin down the death of a minor Victorian MP - the families were named in enough detail we could confirm it was him by identifying his wife, her sister, her niece, various other relatives...

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Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Older U.K. readers will remember what happened to Ratners, and perhaps in that one way the eighties were a better time.

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Alison Eales, Nerves of Steel @alisoneales.com · 09/09/2026

me when I'm trying to choose a healthy breakfast

A screenshot of Prime Minister's Questions with the subtitle 'Mr Bacon, I don't need advice from you.'

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

look, in retrospect, maybe yes, we could have thought to ask literally any questions at all about why we were suddenly getting a new PM and what might be different vis-a-vis the old one, but that seemed boring, so oh well here we go again.

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Jack Tindale @jacktindale.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

One of the more interesting graphs I've seen, something that seems really counter-intuitive until you think about it. England only having about 15 percent forest coverage at the time of the Doomsday book (about half of what France and Germany have today) is wild, isn't it?

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Victorian author: In my book I invented Ebenezer Scrooge as a cautionary tale. Tech Company: At long last, we have created— Sci-Fi Author: Told you, Chuck.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Congratulations to Greater Anglia, who are running the least compelling advert for public transport ever devised

Travel from Broxbourne to Cambridge in 60 mins by train vs 1h 3mins by car

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Sian Bayley @sleighbayley.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

For the last five months the @fullfact.org team has been asking AI chatbots about false claims circulating online before we publish our fact checks. We found the LLMs often parroted the misinformation we're trying to combat. Read more about our experiment here 👇

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Of all the many indignities of the LLM era, services that reply to a complaint email by summarising it back to you and promising they "understand your concerns" are the absolute worst.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Some former colleagues of mine did this, and then discovered they had forgotten to enquire about the seal's holiday plans.

When the elephant seal was tagged on Signy Island, it was hoped that this animal would range deeply into the ice-covered Weddell Sea in winter, thereby providing data from a region inaccessible to ships and from which very few hydrographic measurements have been collected. Unfortunately, the specific elephant seal that was tagged (Fig. 2) was not quite the enthusiastic adventurer that we had hoped for, choosing instead to spend the following months very close to the South Orkneys, and venturing only briefly beyond the shelf slope adjacent to these islands. This behaviour seems to

A very fat and happy seal with a transmitter on its head, "not the intrepid adventurer that we had hoped for"

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 22/08/2026

They’ve turned the Waynes against us

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peterkwells @peterkwells.com · 21/08/2026

Did you know UK govt has published a call for evidence on charging for public sector data, w/examples like bus timetables and environment data? Well, here's a thing on how that will make a lot of things a bit worse and increase costs of providing public services peterkwells.com/2026/08/21/c...

peterkwells.com

Charging for public sector data is likely to cost us more than it raises

The UK government has published a call for evidence called “The marginal cost restriction on public sector data re-use”. It proposes making it easier for the public sector to charge people for public ...

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

"The daily lived experience of the AI boom sucks" is simultaneously a) true, b) obvious, and c) rarely pointed out so succinctly.

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Glen Wilson @glenglenglen.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Does every UK train operator send out riddles about your future journeys with them or is it just a Trafnidiaeth Cymru thing?

An email from TfW titled ‘Changes to your journey’ that reads as follows:

Hello Glen,

Important information about your journey on
26-08-2026 at 07:31

From Colwyn Bay station to Crewe station, getting on at Colwyn Bay station is not possible.

From Colwyn Bay station to Crewe station, getting off at Crewe station is not possible.

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Sumita Pahwa @sumitapahwa.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

When I first moved to SoCal and took my child to the city library (as one does, first thing), this book title had me confused for several minutes.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Today's remarkable biography en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Rake * ten years as a child acrobat * affair with Greek prince * career in musical comedies * radio operator in occupied France * taken prisoner, escaped, moved in with German officer in Paris while on the run * later ... Hollywood butler?

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Dan Silverman @dmsilverman.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I‘m far from an AI doomer, but it is amazing how many serious voices — on LinkedIn, no less! — are sharing stories about how AI slop is quickly becoming one of the top problems they see in academic writing and research “AI will 10x our research!” doesn’t seem to be surviving encounters with reality

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

So here's a little mystery. The name "Elara" is marked as one that AI tools gravitate to in a wide range of contexts (arxiv.org/abs/2606.02184). It seems possible that people are, as a result, having it suggested it as a baby name: it's almost twice as popular in 2025 as it was in 2017-23. But...

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Luke Tryl @luketryl.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Count Binface becomes the most successful comedy candidate in (parliamentary) history. Remains to be seen whether he will be as influential as Sutch in Bootle 1990 who in beating the SDP played a role in the continuity party dissolving.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Cautious Psephologist Voice: and I think we can conclude this is likely the best result for a minor fringe candidate since 1945.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

yes you can throw out books, it's okay

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Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Handy guide for today

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Oddity from an early le Carré (1968) - a character uses the modern sense of "stalking", seemingly before the term was coined, and then apologises for using such a strange metaphor. (OED has it as "anticipating this use" and first normal citation in 1981.)

Her voice became even more pedagogic; the tones came very crisply, brooking no question whatever.

'He would never do such a thing. It was not in his nature, it had not crossed his mind. He assured me categorically that he was not.. stalking me. That was the expression I used; it was one I instantly regretted. I cannot imagine how I came on such a ridiculous metaphor. To the contrary, he said, he was merely following his usual social pattern; if it bothered me he would change it, or decline all further invitations until instructed him otherwise. Nothing was further from his mind than to be a burden to me.'

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

just had a horrific vision of the future in which Zack Polanski and Kemi Badenoch have a podcast and now I need a lie down

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 04/08/2026

damp shrug of cow horn “we’re hairy for a reason” – summer in Scotland —a haar coo

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Aaron Meyers @aaronmeyers.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

"Today is August 4, 2026" There Will Come Soft Rains By: Ray Bradbury

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James Chalmers @jameschalmers.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Yes I acknowledge it makes sense in context but “I need my car to meet criminals” is now my favourite basis for an attempted exceptional hardship plea. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Best-selling crime author Lynda La Plante has been disqualified from driving for six months, despite tearfully telling the court a ban would end her writing career.
The 83-year-old author and screenwriter told Lavender Hill Magistrates' Court she needed her car to meet criminals and sources for research into her next works of fiction.

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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Foucault: "schools serve the same societal function as prisons and mental institutions." Foucault's Mum: "you're still going."

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Aditya Mukerjee 🦦 🏳️‍🌈 @chimeracoder.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

The question is no longer whether LLMs can lead to disordered behavior. It's how we (and you) choose to think and talk about people exhibiting that behavior, and also how we choose to handle the companies and people profiting off dangerous and antisocial actions bsky.app/profile/look...

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Arthur C. Clerk's Mysterious World @fantasticlife.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Well, this is worrying for those of us in the velum printing trade. Let’s hope the government step in. Time to nationalise goats?

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jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.

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